If there's any cultural divide Gruber alludes to, it's that iPhone users tend not to know a whole lot about how the phone works deep inside, and whether by necessity or curiosity, Android users do.
Say, for instance, you're in the Twitter app and click on a link. Instead of embedding a UIWebView, the application fires off a message saying it needs something to display a webpage. The OS then looks at the list of applications that can handle that intent and selects the best one available. If you only have one application that can fulfill that intent, it launches and renders the linked page. If you have multiple browsers, Android prompts you, with an option to remember your preference for that intent.
Which means that I can click a link in Twitter and open it in Opera. Or Firefox. Or any third party browser. And then when I open a link in another application, my preferred browser still gets to handle it. The Twitter app doesn't get to own that experience in the same way that it can on iOS, since it's actually backgrounding itself and letting the other application fully handle the task.
This also applies to getting directions, calling people, sending text messages, etc. The necessary data (an address, phone number, or message) is transparently shunted from the first app to the next. That dance greatly weakens the boundaries between applications, but enables some really great workflows.
Similarly, say I'm looking at my photos and I want to share one with someone. I simply hit the "Share" button, and up pops everything that can handle working with an image. In my case: Bluetooth, Messaging (SMS), Picasa, Twitter, Facebook, Email, and Gmail. Even better, were I to get fed up with the official Twitter client and go install Seesmic, it'd also pop up in that list, automatically, and without any changes to the Photo Gallery itself.
Say I install an FTP client. It'll also appear in that list. Google Goggles, too. Any image I can share, I can also send to Goggles for analysis.
As far as I know, there's nothing like this on iOS, but I'd be happy to learn that I'm mistaken.
That's not to say Android is better for opening map links from twitter... just that it's a different way of doing things. I would say that most criticisms people have when jumping from android to iOS (or vice versa) stem from trying to use one OS in exactly the same way you used the other OS.
I don't think that is true. Most Android users have no idea how their phone works inside. They are not techies, they are just smartphone users. Most people have no idea what a computer does inside. Don't think that all Android users are techies because many on HN are.
I think technically inclined people are more drawn to Android, but I don't think that anything close to the majority of Android's user base is technically inclined by a long shot.
These are the same morons that dig into the Windows registry for "super speed optimizations" and end up blowing their installation to hell.
I've never heard of an app that did that. Can you name some?
[1] http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/02/apple-stanza-usb/
[2] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/220630/how-to-share-custo...
As for the address book thing, I can't name any specifics as I don't follow iOS overly closely; I just know it's a hack I've seen mentioned enough times that it seems to be fairly common knowledge that it can be done, just with the caveat that it's also against the rules.